Pers0na
by GeneralBolivar
Summary: Towards the dawn of a new day, people throughout different parts of New York City begin to disappear. As a newcomer arrives to the city, a horror beyond the mind of man begins to stir beneath. What was once the city of dreams, will now become a city of nightmares. Should fear also grip the hearts of the just, then it will only be a matter of time before the horror encompasses all.


Prologue

"The most merciful thing in the world…is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents." – H.P. Lovecraft

It was the evening of new years for New York City. 1929 was one of the most dreadful years in the city's history, having taken one of the most devastating economic blows and with many of its citizens either in poverty or destitution.

Most of the city's inhabitants were in their homes, trying to stave off the winter cold with their families and what food they could afford for themselves. Those that still remained wealthy after the crash, had taken to their estates on the most pristine parts of the city, attempting to bring some part of cheer to the otherwise dim atmosphere that seemed to emanate from the once golden jewel of the 'Empire State' through parties and other festivities.

Alexander Grant was resting in his apartment in Brooklyn when he received the call to one of these estates.

* * *

Alexander was a blond-haired opportunist, he loved taking what he could from life, even if it was not always in the good light of honor or the law. That is to say that he was not a heartless person, as he had helped many people in the lower districts of Brooklyn, and donated often to organizations to help the impoverished; partly because he had not forgotten his roots, having lived in poverty in Jersey himself, but mainly because he could write it off a tax return.

He was neither a rich man, nor a poor man, but stuck somewhere between the two and had no aspirations to become the latter. He lived in a homely brick building in one of the nicer parts of Brooklyn, a far cry from his bachelor home in New Jersey, but he said that after losing so much money in shares that, "It could have been much worse."

He was perfectly happy with his life however, working as a chauffeur for the 1% of New York that could still call themselves rich. He had many clients in Manhattan, but his most recent one lived close to Central Park.

He received a call from his client, a real estate tycoon that once owned apartments from Bronx to Lexington but now barely owned a complex near Queens, to take him and his family to a friend's party near Carnegie Hill.

He had done runs like this a hundred times before and even now was running the scenario through his head: he would arrive, find them at the doorstep, open the doors for him and his family, drop them off at the party, and wait around with the rest of the staff until they decided to leave.

* * *

'Easy money', he thought.

As he made his way to his client's estate, Alexander began to notice the lack of lights on the street overlooking Central Park.

Power was cut from so many homes in Brooklyn. There, the darkness seemed almost familiar, but to the high-end neighborhoods of Manhattan it seemed very alien.

As he approached the estate, neither the lights, nor the clients, were on the porch. While Alexander parked the car, he discovered something odd about the house. Rain began to pour down as Alexander walked towards the house, and towards its open door.

After searching, and calling, for his client throughout the house, he found that they were nowhere in sight. As he made his way out, he noticed that their grandfather clock read 11:36.

'Robert told me that he wanted me to meet him at 11:30 p.m.,' he thought, 'where the hell are they?' As he made his way to the car, the darkness of the light less street became even darker as more rain began to fall.

"If anything they'll be at the party, and forgot to close the door," Alexander muttered to himself while starting the engine, "very careless on their part, if I would have had the key I would have locked it for them."

While heading out of the street, and passing central park south, he noticed a woman in the rain walking into the park. He initially paid it no mind, until he found several others. They were poor, rich, and some even appeared homeless, and they were all headed towards central park.

Common sense told him to leave and not care for this phenomenon, but as he began to leave the vicinity of the park, he found a familiar sight among the people. In an almost exactly similar outfit, he found himself, standing before himself.

And it then spoke to him, "Who are you who puts aside the feelings of others before your own?"

'What the hell...,' the first Alexander thought, 'I can't be so tired that I start seeing…this.'

"No, you are more than just tired," the second Alexander spoke, much to the other's surprise, "you are tired of them: the rich, the wasteful, and the rats that live only from the scraps that fall to them."

Before Alexander could contemplate how the other 'Alexander' had read his mind, he noticed more people walking, some faster than others, towards the middle of the park; Alexander then noticed that he was walking with them.

"You care only for yourself, and what you can take away from the world," the second spoke, "who cares about the poor or the rich, what only matters is you and you alone."

He could not talk back to it, he felt almost drawn to it, in spite of all the things it was saying towards him, even if he didn't believe him. Alexander, and several others, soon found himself near Central Park Lake, near the edges of the shore.

"Even if you deny it in your mind, you cannot deny that I am you," the second Alexander said to his double, "for I am a shadow, the true self."

He could not move, he could not even think, only listen; until a booming voice drowned out his shadow.

"There is nary a way for you to even begin to understand this, child of man," the voice spoke in a dialect that Alexander could not comprehend, "but know this, you along with everyone gathered here is now mine, whether you resist or not will be up to your will."

As he finished listening to the words that nearly imploded his ears, Alexander regained control of himself from the stupor his shadow put him under, and he saw everyone else did as well. But before he could speak out, dark tendrils began to drag the newly awakened people into the lake.

As many tried to get away, they found themselves walled off by the forest surrounding the lake, as the trees appeared to have grown around the only exits from the park. As Alexander turned around from the trees he found himself between a crowd of people and the dark, muddy banks of the lake that now began to overflow themselves.

As Alexander contemplated how he would escape, a dark tendril pulled him towards the lake, and began to drag him underneath the surface. He saw his shadow for the last time on the shore, looking almost as if taunting him.

Before the first Alexander was completely dragged underneath, he yelled to him the words he had since he led him to the lake, "You're not me!"

The last thing Alexander saw, were the polluted, yellow eyes of his shadow as he laughed at him, before being pulled underneath the water.


End file.
